The Naming of St Kilda
The Yalukit-William tribe from the Kulin Nation were the traditional owners of the land that became St Kilda. They called St Kilda Euro-Yroke meaning the grinding stone place, because local stone found along the shoreline was used to sharpen their stone axes.
The Ngargee Tree, located at the top of Fitzroy Street, where it meets St Kilda Junction
European settlers began to arrive in the latter part of the 1830s and settled on the banks of the Yarra. Some farmers ventured south of the fledgling settlement with the first leaseholds being taken in the St Kilda area in 1839, when it was referred to simply as ‘Green Knoll.’
In 1842, as the city expanded, 22 allotments of land were officially surveyed and offered for sale by the local authorities, to be called ‘The Village of Fareham’ after a village in Hampshire, probably by the surveyor Thomas H Nutt.
It is said that name was changed when Superintendent La Trobe, at a champagne picnic on the Green Knoll overlooking the bay, suggesting that the area be called ‘St Kilda’ after the schooner-yacht Lady of St Kilda anchored off the foreshore. The vessel had been anchored for some months and dominated the shoreline to such an extent that the area was referred to locally as ‘the St Kilda foreshore.’
Sketch of the Lady of St Kilda by Jno. R. Browning c 1890 Source: Wikipedia
The first purchaser was James Ross Lawrence, who had been Captain on the Lady of St Kilda. He was allowed to name the street that fronted his block of land. Lawrence chose the name Acland Street, after Sir Thomas Acland, the ship’s original owner.
Naming of the Ship
While there is a Scottish island called St Kilda, which Acland had visited with his wife, the ship was named after one of the island’s famous inhabitants, known as The Lady of St Kilda.
The term was first coined in the 18th century to refer to the Lady Grange of Edinburgh, Rachel Chiesley, kidnapped in 1732 and said to have been imprisoned on St Kilda. Having overheard Jacobites conspiring in her home in Edinburgh, she threatened to expose them. In response, her husband had her kidnapped and sent to a number of remote Scottish islands, and held a mock funeral for her in Edinburgh. She lived on St Kilda from 1734-42, before being taken to Skye where she died after a failed rescue attempt.
The ship named after Lady Grange did not fare well once she left Melbourne.
replica of The Lady of St Kilda at The Lady of St Kilda, cnr Smith and Barkly Streets
Encyclopedia of Australian Shipwrecks lists the Lady of St Kilda as follows:
” Lady of St Kilda. Schooner, 136 tons. Captain Lawrence. Arrived at Hobsons Bay from Plymouth, 6 July 1841, having been seriously damaged when off Cape of Good Hope. After a drunken brawl at Williamstown, the vessel was anchored elsewhere and at one stage drifted ashore on a sandbank off what then became known as St Kilda’s beach. Whilst in Port Phillip she was advertised for sale ‘in exchange for sheep’ but was eventually sold in Sydney and re-registered in 1843. Her register indicates ‘wrecked in Tahiti, date unknown’. “
Naming of the Ship
The name St Kilda does not refer to a saint and there is some conjecture about the origin of the name. The island is called Hiort in Gaelic, yet ancient maps of the remote Scottish islands refer to Skilda(r), which could derive from the Norse word ‘skildir’ meaning shield. Whatever the origins of its name, just to confirm, there ain’t no saint in St Kilda!
The Lady of St Kilda art work by Alex Nemirovsky on Carlisle St in Balaclava, 1993